Wayne 985:Here's the long and short of it: when a literary source is adapted to the big screen, there are typically a few changes that need to be made, both for pacing and for dramatization.

The Hobbit book was good. The Hobbit film was good. The differences are there, but fairly minimal in the grand scheme. Peter Jackson has made four great Middle-Earth films thus far, all close to the three-hour mark, and I suspect the two left will be entertaining as well.

Stop behaving like Tolkien fundamentalists (you know who you are) and learn to enjoy an adaptation.

Here here!

The Hobbit was a very preliminary work when it was written, and by the end of his life Tolkien had added several books worth of material and notes about how the events in The Hobbit really happened and what went on in it.

Before the release of the movie I went back and re-read the book (its been about ten years since I read it last), and I was shocked at how much it resembled a screenplay for an animated movie, lots of dialogue with a note in the middle that just says "Insert a really awesome battle scene here, lots of explosions and guts being ripped out" and leaves the actual battle to the mind of the animator/reader. Hell, the most important part of the story, the rise of Sauron as a necromancer, is barely mentioned; Gandalf just tells Bilbo "Yeah, we drove that guy out", no description, nothing.

As much as I LOVE Tolkien, and The Hobbit, the straight up original text was very much the skeleton of the idea he had for the whole Middle Earth universe. To make a 1:1 adaptation of the text he wrote at the beginning, rather than fleshing it out to what it became at the end of Tolkien's writing would be the real insult to his genius.

ClintonKun:ElusiveWookiee: There were definitely some things invented (Azog), but the vast majority of the "padding" came from the Appendices of LOTR. And I am perfectly fine with that. I could watch days' worth of Middle Earth adventures and never tire of it.

Same here. Hell, I knew they were going to put in Dol Guldur years before the movie was announced. And why wouldn't they? It's a badass story that I've always wanted to see. If the movie was like The Hobbit as it's written, yeah it'll be shorter, but Gandalf will disappear halfway through, doing god knows what, and then reappear in the epilogue, with not a word to say about what he was doing, maybe a mumble or two about the Necromancer. People would flip out about one of its stars being absent for much of the movie(s) for no good reason. They would also wonder who this necromancer was, and what made him so important that the book/movie(s) had to drag its most powerful character away from the plot.(and yeah, Gandalf was absent for much of the 2nd half of FotR and TTT too, but they were for reasons important to the main plot, as we know it. He died and got better in FotR and in TTT he was gathering the Rohirrim. In The Hobbit book, he just simply runs off mumbling about the Necromancer, and we don't know how important that was until the LotR appendices) And that's why Tolkien wrote about Dol Guldur. The Hobbit is not in a vacuum away from the rest of the mythos, despite what is written in it. I think Tolkien has said that The Hobbit as a book was heavily skewed towards Bilbo's perspective and that in "reality" the journey was quite different in tone.

And yeah, I could watch a day's worth of Middle Earth too. Hell, I could watch a first-person view of someone walking through the Shire or Rivendell for hours on end and I'd be in bliss.

Yeah, in one of the Unfinished Tales there's a scene in Minas Tirith with Gandalf and the Walkers, where Gandalf explains his version of that. Basically by that point he knew there was going to be a showdown in the next century or two between Mordor and Gondor, and that Smaug would naturally side with Sauron. At this point neither side had the Ring or knew where it could be found, so it might still be possible to at least fight Sauron to a draw, but not with the Dragon out there. Gandalf basically cared about Thorin only in that he would be a good shield for his left flank, if Erebor could be retaken. Bilbo needed to get involved because Gandalf foresaw that Hobbits would be part of the war, and he needed a place to get started.

hetheeme:Wayne 985: Here's the long and short of it: when a literary source is adapted to the big screen, there are typically a few changes that need to be made, both for pacing and for dramatization.

The Hobbit book was good. The Hobbit film was good. The differences are there, but fairly minimal in the grand scheme. Peter Jackson has made four great Middle-Earth films thus far, all close to the three-hour mark, and I suspect the two left will be entertaining as well.

Stop behaving like Tolkien fundamentalists (you know who you are) and learn to enjoy an adaptation.

Here here!

The Hobbit was a very preliminary work when it was written, and by the end of his life Tolkien had added several books worth of material and notes about how the events in The Hobbit really happened and what went on in it.

Before the release of the movie I went back and re-read the book (its been about ten years since I read it last), and I was shocked at how much it resembled a screenplay for an animated movie, lots of dialogue with a note in the middle that just says "Insert a really awesome battle scene here, lots of explosions and guts being ripped out" and leaves the actual battle to the mind of the animator/reader. Hell, the most important part of the story, the rise of Sauron as a necromancer, is barely mentioned; Gandalf just tells Bilbo "Yeah, we drove that guy out", no description, nothing.

As much as I LOVE Tolkien, and The Hobbit, the straight up original text was very much the skeleton of the idea he had for the whole Middle Earth universe. To make a 1:1 adaptation of the text he wrote at the beginning, rather than fleshing it out to what it became at the end of Tolkien's writing would be the real insult to his genius.

Yeah, much of what was in the book was pretty much summarized. The movie actually follows the pacing of the book pretty damn well, if you take into account the events summarized as happening in real time. Look at the Battle of the Five Armies. As its described, its an epic battle, not on scale with Pellenor Fields, but still a worthy bookend to the story. It'll make for a good 30-45 minute setpiece. And yet it takes all of 10 pages in the book. And there's the extra time beforehand when Thorin is under siege by the elves, and much politicing is done and it takes up 10 pages but lasts at least several weeks in "real time". Anyhoo, the movie is pretty damn brisk for being 3 hours long. I was hungry for more when it ended.

taurusowner:I just wish they wouldn't have made Radagast into a bumbling squeaky voiced idiot. He's a freaking Maia.

Radagast was perfect -- here is a guy that is so in touch with nature and in love with the forest and its animals that he lets birds crap on his head. The fact that he shuns the intelligent races and lives alone in a tree, complete with his mannerisms and odd behavior, foretells his special fate: That he is destined to be completely subsumed by Middle Earth itself. By the time the events in LOTR rolled around he was nowhere to be found and wouldn't be of much help even if he was.

ElusiveWookiee:There were definitely some things invented (Azog), but the vast majority of the "padding" came from the Appendices of LOTR. And I am perfectly fine with that. I could watch days' worth of Middle Earth adventures and never tire of it.

Same here. Hell, I knew they were going to put in Dol Guldur years before the movie was announced. And why wouldn't they? It's a badass story that I've always wanted to see. If the movie was like The Hobbit as it's written, yeah it'll be shorter, but Gandalf will disappear halfway through, doing god knows what, and then reappear in the epilogue, with not a word to say about what he was doing, maybe a mumble or two about the Necromancer. People would flip out about one of its stars being absent for much of the movie(s) for no good reason. They would also wonder who this necromancer was, and what made him so important that the book/movie(s) had to drag its most powerful character away from the plot.(and yeah, Gandalf was absent for much of the 2nd half of FotR and TTT too, but they were for reasons important to the main plot, as we know it. He died and got better in FotR and in TTT he was gathering the Rohirrim. In The Hobbit book, he just simply runs off mumbling about the Necromancer, and we don't know how important that was until the LotR appendices) And that's why Tolkien wrote about Dol Guldur. The Hobbit is not in a vacuum away from the rest of the mythos, despite what is written in it. I think Tolkien has said that The Hobbit as a book was heavily skewed towards Bilbo's perspective and that in "reality" the journey was quite different in tone.

And yeah, I could watch a day's worth of Middle Earth too. Hell, I could watch a first-person view of someone walking through the Shire or Rivendell for hours on end and I'd be in bliss.